I am Immortal
by Neverhere
Summary: There's a spirit that lives forever. She's met five boys who mean more to her than anyone else...


*Title: I am Immortal  
*Author: Neverhere  
*Rated: 12   
*Pairings: 5+(guess who!), 1+2-ish  
*Warnings: Weirdness, reincarnation (sort of) and... well... total weirdness. See if you can guess who's   
the immortal person! It really shouldn't be hard. Ergh! ^_^  
*Disclaimers: I do not own the GW boys. I do not own the GW boys. I do not own the GW boys.   
I do however own my nail polish. A nice dark purple shade. ^_~  
  
  
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
  
  
I have always been lonely. For someone who has always lived and managed to stay sane, and who   
will die when love has been found, this is not a comforting thing by any means.  
  
As long as I have lived I have never had a friend, a family member, anyone who I could be with. I was   
just alone. There were five exceptions of course, five times when I thought I had friends, five times   
I was not quite so lonely.  
  
The first was a knight. He marched with a much-loved king from a long-gone city, looking for some   
holy cup that would cure all evils ravaging their land. His king was a good man who I saw, and his   
wife too who would cause him so much pain. His son I did see as well, and when the battle came   
around between father and son in the fields of Camlann, my knight was there fighting. He was a   
good, strong man, eyes the colour of a darkening deep blue sky, and so dedicated to his king's cause   
he seldom questioned his orders. His king was a great man, and my knight knew it.   
  
After the battle in which the great king had died as he had killed his own son, I walked through the   
battlefield amongst the dead bodies and the dying. My knight was there, in a pool of his own blood,   
patiently waiting to die. An arrow had pierced his gut. I stood, looking at him, as he lay looking at me   
with eyes that were fading from full deep sapphire to some ghostly lighter shade. Neither of us   
spoke. He could not, and I did not want to. There are some things you cannot say.  
  
The man - truthfully, he could not have been more than a boy, but he made one believe he was older   
than he was - slowly raised his hand towards me, as if something inside him dissolved and he   
wanted company at the last. For one frozen moment I felt kinship with him, understanding. I reached   
out to touch his hand, fingertips to fingertips, my hair obscuring the sight of his face.  
  
I took his soul, I think.  
  
The second was years later when I had been travelling again, but had come back to where I had   
found my knight. There was a queen on the throne this time, a woman who was firece and   
determined and a strong personality I had never seen before in anyone else who had lived. She was   
burning people at the stakes for being part of a section of a religion, along with the accused witches   
and murderers and criminals. I never understood it. Freedom is something that if given can be used   
to control, and no one has fully grasped this yet.  
  
The second was a priest. When all around people were changing from one form of religion to the   
other to avoid being caught by the authority, he stayed as he was, and people admired him for it. He   
gave hope and strength to those who needed it. His life burned so brightly it dazzled people. It even   
dazzled me. When they came for him, though, no one tried to defend him.  
  
As the fires were lit in the wood around his feet, I stood a few feet away with the crowd of people who   
were either jeering at him or crying for him. He wasn't defeated, you know. He was grinning and   
shouting things as he masked his fear. Because he was afraid, and he was strong enough to keep it   
hidden from those who persecuted him.  
  
I looked straight into his eyes, watching him, as he stared right back. Because of the heat and flames   
of the fire, I could not tell the colour of his eyes. His hair was ragged where they had hacked off the   
long braid that had characterised both him and his rebellious nature. He was lonely then, alone in   
death and undefended. He looked at me, afraid and childlike, and I could only look back, sorry for him.   
  
When he reached his hand out, I didn't need to touch his fingers. I couldn't even reach. But I think I   
took his soul as well.  
  
The third was one in a gang of highwaymen who did what he did so he could live a respectful life. He   
was noble and proud, unlike the others in his gang. It was those other people who abandoned him on   
a road after a successful hold-up, leaving him to fend off the officials who were chasing him. They left   
him to die, and never looked back.  
  
So his friends had not been friends. In the fighting, difficult to do in the dark depths of the countryside,   
he was shot and managed to crawl away under some bushes. He lay there until the officals went   
away, and by then he was already close to death from the bullet wound.  
  
As the others, he never said anything to me when I moved towards where he lay curled up in a puddle   
of blood-mushed mud. A woman in the countryside after a fierce fight is not common, but I think he was   
too far lost to realise that. To find that your friends would gladly betray you for some coins and jewels   
and leave you bleeding to death must have been soul-destroying for the poor man. And as the others   
he was alone in his final moments, and I was there.  
  
He reached forwards. Instead of touching his fingertips, I took his hand, almost as if I was shaking it in   
greeting. I took his soul then too.  
  
After his death I did not want to stay in that land again. I left, and never came back.   
  
The fourth was the musician. When he played people would stop in their track and listen, entranced by   
such young talent. His parents pushed him to play the violin, which he loved, but they pushed him too   
hard. They treated him as a thing instead of a person. His only friend was the violin and the music.   
Unlike the others, I saw him before he died, and heard him play. If there was anyone better than he,   
then I would be very surprised indeed. When he picked up the violin it seemed that it had not been   
strung with normal strings but the heart strings of everyone listening, so whether he played a riotous   
dance or a beautiful lament, it brought our emotions darting around in concert with the boy and his   
violin. When he played, he seemed to cast magic over us all.  
  
He lay dying some months later of typhoid, I believe. His parents left him at the hospital to recover,   
foolishly thinking that he would. No one spoke to him or paid much attention to him, and he was still a   
boy. So young.  
  
I came to him with his violin.  
  
I helped him hold it and he played it one last time, and instead of the heart-felt lament I expected, he   
played a tremendously uplifting Irish piece that pierced the dark hopelessness of the dank and ugly   
hospital. The music soared with the soul. He played it to give himself confidence and to help him   
believe he was not alone. He wasn't. But as the ones before him we exchanged no words.  
  
I stayed with him for company. I held his hand, because he was still a boy. I took his soul too.  
  
The fifth was different. The Dragon.  
  
A great master of the martial arts, he had made many enemies in his time. He had no family, most of   
his friends were hovering between being enemies and friends, and he kept himself to himself. When   
the assassin came, my fifth fought him and won, but discovered the poisoned needle behind his knee   
far too late. I came to him and sat beside him as he lay on his bed, keeping his breathing steady. He   
looked at me and knew me for what I was. He understood. How, I shall never know.  
  
He spoke to me. Unlike the other four, he spoke. It lessened the belief that he was alone, I think.  
  
"How long have you lived?"  
  
"Long enough, now."  
  
"When will you die?"  
  
"When I fall in love."  
  
"Why is that?"  
  
"I am not human. I never was. I never will be. I am a different being."  
  
"Where will you go, after?"  
  
"To the other side."  
  
"Who are you?"  
  
I looked very steadily at him. I had no answer.  
  
As he died I held his hand and spoke to him of the countries I had seen and the stories I had heard. It   
was there and then, as he died and I took his soul too, I decided I would stay in this strange Eastern   
land and learn what had made this one so strong. He had not been lonely. He had been with someone   
at the end, like the others, and that someone was me. He had not been alone and the loneliness was   
gone because we spoke. He had started speaking to me. He had the spiritual and physical strength to   
speak first and to carry on. It intruigued me.  
  
Now it is hundreds of years later, and I have done what was needed to be done. The souls I took I   
have given back, and there is one difference to life now.  
  
As I was before, the odd woman who went from land to land and never made friend nor foe, I left when   
my fifth died. I became who I am now, as I finally lie dying.   
  
Death is a relief.   
  
He is here, the fifth. I brought him back. I brought them all back with the souls I took. None of them   
can remember, but they all are as they were when they died. I know they will meet one day. He's still   
young in this life, but his eyes are the same dark brown of the one who spoke to me. He will be strong.  
  
I've spent a long time thinking of them all. I realised that they need each other. The knight needs a   
light, life-filled person to keep him concsious of life. The priest needs someone stronger than him to   
help him because he isn't as strong as he pretends to be. Together, I imagine, they could be perfect.   
fit like the proverbial glove. The highwayman and the young musician, too, need similar things. I wonder   
if it was chance that I picked them, because together they will work so perfectly. I can feel it.  
  
The soldier and the priest.  
The highwayman and the musician.  
But the Dragon...  
  
I do not know about him. But those four are not going to be lonely now. The Dragon will find someone else,   
I think, who will take the gaping loneliness away.  
  
I did, after all.  
  
I'm not lonely anymore.  
  
Meiran sleeps now...  
  
  
  
  
*~*Owari*~* 


End file.
